Wire soldering can be a complex process, especially when working with small wires and small termination traces on circuit boards. Soldering can require substantial complicated manual operations almost at the limit of hand-eye coordination systems' capability aided by microscopes to properly align and terminate the small wires. For example, soldering wires of sizes 44 American Wire Gauge (wire diameter of 0.050 millimeters) onto pad traces having widths of 0.050 millimeters, with gaps of 0.050 millimeters between such pad traces, onto a substrate laminate having a thickness of 0.025 millimeters is extremely difficult and is possible only under microscope.
On average, it takes more than three hours for a well-trained human operator to align the wires and complete such soldering of a typical component having 64 solder joints. The cost associated with the well-trained operator expending such an amount of time results in such components is fairly expensive and limited in supply. In addition, although the well-trained operators are able to produce a high quality component, the soldering quality within the 64 solder joints is inconsistent. Some of the solder joints will have higher quality than other solder joints. The inability to have all of the solder joints at the higher quality is an overall limitation of such techniques.
The traditional hot iron tip soldering process by a human operator involves many complicated maneuvers and delicate wire manipulation operations, including: (1) straightening a section of the wire, positioning and aligning it onto its corresponding pad trace; (2) holding the aligned wire section in place at clamping points so the to be soldered section is visible and accessible by the hot iron tip (force feedback control is practically excised to keep proper touch during the solder reflowing process when the wire-pad relative position may change); (3) moving the hot iron tip to touch the soldered sections and to reflow the already pre-tinned solder material; and (4) removing the hot iron tip quickly, finishing contact once the reflowing is observed to reach the required span and the soldered wire is properly seated in place.
Generally, robotic positioning and manipulation of the fine wires has not been utilized in such circumstances due to the complexity and the delicate nature of such components. Robotically manipulating fine wires where high accuracy with very delicate force sensing feedback capabilities has proven to be difficult. This is particularly true in environments, such as in a laser soldering process, in which the robotic manipulation device encounters thermal shock and the like. Consequently, existing high-accuracy feedback enabled robotic systems are too fragile to be used in such wire soldering automation processes.
It would, therefore, be beneficial to provide a robotic manipulation device that includes one or more improvements in comparison to the prior art. In particular, it would be beneficial to provide a robotic wire manipulation device which provides high-accuracy force feedback and which can be used in wire soldering automation processes to facilitate the automated alignment of the wires.